April 21, 2016 — Over the course of 18 months, Associated Press journalists located men held in cages, tracked ships and stalked refrigerated trucks to expose the abusive practices of the fishing industry in Southeast Asia. The reporters’ dogged effort led to the release of more than 2,000 slaves and traced the seafood they caught to supermarkets and pet food providers across the U.S. For this investigation, AP has won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.
Hardships await fishermen lured to Indonesia
April 21, 2016 — “I would never recommend anyone to work at sea,” says a fisherman from Myanmar who lost four fingers in an accident while on a fishing trawler.
Despite a difficult life as a fisherman, Tunlin knew he had to be patient if he wanted to survive. “I couldn’t give up my life at sea,” said the 34-year-old who returned from Ambon Island in Indonesia last year.
Tunlin is among some 2,900 fishermen who have been rescued and repatriated by the Labour Rights Promotion Network Foundation (LPN). The operation, started in 2014, continues to help both Thais and migrants, mostly from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, stranded in Indonesia.
Recalling his life before Indonesia, Tunlin said he had worked at a shrimp-peeling shed from the age of 16 in Samut Sakhon province, home to a large Myanmar migrant community. But the meagre earnings –100 baht per day — hardly sufficed.
CNMI, Hawaii Longliners Agree On Sharing Tuna Quota
April 20, 2016 — Senate Vice President Arnold I. Palacios says the CNMI and the Hawaii Longline Association have finalized a deal regarding the tuna-catch limit.
Palacios was with Gov. Ralph Torres who visited Hawaii to meet its governor and officials of the Hawaii Longline Association who, the senator said, agreed to an annual payment of $250,000 for three years.
Palacios said the deal had been on hold for six months.
New ways to fight human-rights abuses in the global seafood industry
April 14, 2016 — When Bayani secured an overseas job in the fishing industry from a broker in his home country of the Philippines, it was about finding work that he was skilled at and enjoyed and that could support his family. He didn’t expect to be forced to fish illegally, to be imprisoned on a fishing boat, or to have his passport and other documents withheld by his employer. Even so, had his family back home been receiving his salary, as he thought was happening, he said he might have kept quiet. But when Bayani learned a third-party was skimming his pay for an alleged debt owed by his employer, he decided to break his silence regardless of the consequences.
Bayani’s ordeal lasted for months during which he feared for his own wellbeing and that of his family. But because he had access to a mobile phone and a former employer who had leverage with his current employer, he eventually escaped his ordeal. Many other fishers in the global fishing industry aren’t so lucky. Bayani was not kidnapped and enslaved. He did not witness murder, child labor, or sexual abuse — all well documented occurrences in seafood supply chains.
Human-rights abuses in the seafood industry have grabbed headlines, causing governments, NGOs, businesses, and individual consumers to consider a more holistic view of sustainability — one that incorporates social as well as environmental responsibility. Recently, new approaches to improving the industry’s human-rights record have emerged. These often involve adding a social dimension to sustainable-seafood certification schemes or improving oversight via technological fixes. However, experts have yet to agree on which approaches are likely to work or which to embrace, given how bad the situation is.
US: Forced labor continues on Thai fishing vessels
April 14, 2016 — WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department said Wednesday that forced labor on Thai fishing vessels has continued in the past year despite legal reforms and arrests following an Associated Press investigation into the country’s seafood industry.
The department made the assessment in its annual global review of human rights practices, released in Washington by Secretary of State John Kerry. The report covers the 2015 calendar year.
The report finds that the Thai government has reaffirmed its “zero tolerance” policy for human trafficking and updated many laws that enhance regulatory powers and increase punishment for violations. An amended anti-trafficking law provides protection to whistleblowers and gives authorities the power to halt operations temporarily or suspend licenses of businesses and vehicles involved in human trafficking.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New Jersey Herald
UN committee begins work on high seas biodiversity pact
April 13, 2016 — The first session of a preparatory committee tasked with elaborating draft elements for an international, legally binding instrument on marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction started unpacking several key topics with an eye on practical advancement, according to reports from the 28 March – 8 April meeting.
During the session, held at UN headquarters in New York, many delegations moved past debates on the usefulness of a new instrument that have stalled previous efforts, according to Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB). They instead began detailed exchanges on “how” to put such an instrument in place, given the pressures facing today’s complex marine and environmental governance landscape.
Discussion included consideration of the new instrument’s relationship with existing tools and bodies, guiding principles and approaches, marine genetic resources, environmental impact assessments, capacity building, and technology transfer, among other things.
“The constructive discussion and active participation in the room on all elements of the package bode well for the next PrepCom session,” said Jessica Battle, Marine Manager, WWF International, at the close of the talks last week.
Read the full story at the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development
How China’s fishermen are fighting a covert war in the South China Sea
April 13, 2016 — TANMEN, China — In the disputed waters of the South China Sea, fishermen are the wild card.
China is using its vast fishing fleet as the advance guard to press its expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, experts say. That is not only putting Beijing on a collision course with its Asian neighbors, but also introducing a degree of unpredictability that raises the risks of periodic crises.
In the past few weeks, tensions have flared with Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam as Chinese fishermen, often backed up by coast guard vessels, have ventured far from their homeland and close to other nations’ coasts. They are just the latest conflicts in China’s long-running battle to expand its fishing grounds and simultaneously exert its maritime dominance.
China’s Island Building Hurts Environment, U.S. Report Says
April 13, 2016 — China’s reclamation work in the South China Sea may have destroyed coral reefs, damaged fisheries in a region heavily dependent on seafood and breached international law on protecting the environment, according to a report to U.S. Congress.
“The scale and speed of China’s activities in the South China Sea, the biodiversity of the area, and the significance of the Spratly Islands to the ecology of the region make China’s actions of particular concern,” an April 12 report prepared for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said.
China reclaimed about 3,000 acres of land on seven features it occupies in the Spratly islands of the South China Sea between December 2013 and October 2015, the report said. Vietnam has reclaimed about 80 acres, Malaysia 70 acres, the Philippines 14 acres and Taiwan eight acres, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
Are Maine lobsters invading Europe? Even among Swedes, not everyone’s buying it
April 11, 2016 — There’s a bounty on the head of any Maine lobster found in Scandinavian waters.
Homarus americanus is a parasite-carrying, disease-spreading invasive alien threatening to breed infertile hybrids and destroy the local species.
That’s the view of researchers and politicians in Sweden, where Maine’s biggest export product is a feared intruder. Swedish officials describe a race against time to stop the invasion as they try to convince the 28-member European Union to halt all imports of the North American lobster, a move that could cost Maine lobstermen almost $11 million a year.
But some European chefs, whose patrons value the meaty North American crustacean over its tiny European cousin, say such a ban is premature and would have dire consequences for their establishments.
Sweden has been sounding the alarm since 2008, when a trawler first netted three North American lobsters with rubber bands on their claws off its west coast. Since then, 32 North American lobsters have been caught in Swedish waters, a sign they had been released into the ocean or escaped despite national prohibitions to hold American lobsters in net cages. Most of them have been caught in the Gullmar Fjord, causing increasing alarm among researchers at the Department for Aquatic Resources in the Swedish city of Lysekil.
Fishing Amid Territorial Disputes in the South China Sea
April 8, 2016 — CATO, Philippines — As Asian countries jostle for territory in the South China Sea, one Filipino fisherman is taking a stand.
He has faced down Chinese coast guard rifles, and even engaged in a stone-throwing duel with the Chinese last month that shattered two windows on his outrigger.
“They’ll say, ‘Out, out of Scarborough,'” Renato Etac says, referring to Scarborough Shoal, a rocky outcropping claimed by both the Philippines and China. He yells back, “Where is the document that shows Scarborough is Chinese property?”
At one level, the territorial disputes in the South China Sea are a battle of wills between American and Chinese battleships and planes. At another level, they are cat-and-mouse chases between the coast guards of several countries and foreign fishermen, and among the fishing boats themselves.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times
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